Impacts

High-resolution chemistry-climate model simulation with GEOS-5

The GEOS-5 data assimilation system (DAS) developed at NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office was built from the ground up using the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). It consists of over two dozen ESMF Gridded Components that can be coupled through the framework to build a variety of applications in weather and climate research, from atmospheric reanalysis and weather prediction to coupled climate modeling.

The image shows results from a free-running version of the GEOS-5 atmospheric general circulation model coupled to a sophisticated stratospheric chemistry package (STRAT-CHEM), also developed at NASA, but independently of GEOS-5, which has now been made ESMF compliant. The results are some of the first from ultra-high resolution (2/3 degree longitude by 1/2 degree latitude) coupled chemistry-climate simulations. The ESMF coupling of these two systems allows us to perform calculations with a variety of interactions between the chemistry and the atmospheric radiation, large-scale dynamics, and sub-grid parameterizations.

Image courtesy of the GEOS-5 team at NASA GMAO.